In my friend Valentine’s Restoration boudoir—for her the "Restoration" embraces, generously and
anachronistically, the fifteenth century, the Directorate, the Second Empire, and on to the Grevy style—
there is a little painting by Velvet Brueghel. Snow turned to smoky gold, a little house with a pointed roof
from which stream miraculous beams of light, and, converging on the little house, theories of bourgeois
gnomes in fur bonnets; in short, a Nativity by Velvet Brueghel, what an antique dealer might call a "pretty
curio" or a "little wonder," depending on whether he’s easygoing or distinguished.
At my friend Valentine’s, I often drink tea I don’t like, while looking at the Brueghel, which I do like.
Yesterday, I asked my friend distractedly, "Valentine, how is it you came by this little painting?" She
blushed. "Why do you ask that?"
"I didn’t think I was being indiscreet."
She blushed more. "What an idea! . . . It wasn’t the least bit indiscreet, really ...It’s a family memento. It was
given to me in 1913, by my Aunt Poittier."
"Your Aunt Poittier? Which one? You have as many aunts and uncles named Poittier as there are seeds in
a watermelon!"
She fidgeted uneasily.
"Well, yes . . . it’s quite true . . . Do you really have to remind me of that story, in which the role I played was .
. . was . . .’
"Doubtful?"
"Almost. You won’t leave me in peace until I’ve told you the story, will you? It was in 1913 that my Aunt
Poittier . . ."
"Which one?"
"Aunt Olga. You don’t know her. In 1913 my Aunt Olga lost her only son.
"A little boy, if I remember correctly?"
"Yes, a little boy of about forty-eight. So, since there was nothing keeping her at Chartres anymore, she
came to live in Paris, with Uncle Poittier. They settled in the rue Raynouard, but since they felt very lonely,
they spent almost all their time at my other Uncle Poittier’s . . ."
"Which one?"
"The one in the Place d’Jena, Paul Poittier, the brother... I'm telling you, you don’t know him! And since at
that time Aunt Marie was living in the Boulevard Delessert ...”
"Who? Aunt Marie?"
"Oh? Aunt Marie Poittier, really now, the wife of the third brother, you don’t know her! If you insist on
interrupting me all the time . . ."
"I’ll shut up."
“So they were quite content to visit as they liked; it was convenient for me when I was making my monthly
round of family visits.
In 1913 I had gone to spend Easter vacation with Charles’s family . . ." "Charles who? Charles Poittier’s
family?"
"No, the Charles Loisillons."
"Oh, good, I like that better."
"Why?"
"I like having those Loisillons in there among all those nondescript Poittiers, like a poplar on a barren
plain. Go on, please."
"What was I saying? Oh, yes . . . ! So, while I was at Charles’s, I received a wire from Mama! UNCLE DIED
YESTERDAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. MEET PLACE D’IENA, TOMORROW MORNING, TEN 0 CLOCK
PRECISELY. So I borrow my cousin’s crepe veil, black cape, and black gloves, and jump on the train,
where I spend the night. I arrive at the house of the deceased, at my poor Aunt Olga’s, half an hour late. A
night on the rails, an empty stomach, my crepe veil . . . I could hardly see through it and I couldn’t stand up,
and then that odor of mortuary flowers as soon as I reached the staircase . . . In Aunt Olga’s big drawing
room there was a wall of seated women, veiled down to their feet in thick crepe. I started kissing all of
them and was mumbling, ‘Oh, poor uncle . . . Can you believe it . . . ‘You act so silly when you don’t feel any
grief, don’t you . . .
"All the same, I recognized Mama’s good, firm hand, and her violet perfume, and I clung to her skirt as I did
when I was little. I said to her very softly, ‘Well, how did it happen?’ She didn’t have time to answer,
because another black wall, taller than the other, the men in full mourning, started moving toward us, and
we stood up. Uncle Edme . . .
"Who’s Uncle Edme?"
"A distant uncle—you don’t know him—came over to kiss me, and then another cousin, and then two
schoolboys wearing woolen gloves, and other relatives, and finally a tall, dried up old man, with red eyes,
who kissed my hand and said to me: ‘My dear niece, how good of you to have come back . . .'
"He straightened up: I let out a loud scream and fell back into I don’t know whose arms.
"Why?"
"The dead man was standing in front of me, in a white tie, and was thanking me for having come back . . .
Come back! And there he was! I was carried off, in a dead faint, and I only pulled myself together when I
learned that I had gotten my uncles mixed up, that the real dead man had died of an embolism, at his
brother’s, he hadn’t been brought to the rue Raynonard and . . ."
"I understand. But how does the little Brueghel painting fit in?"
My friend lowered her eyes. "Well . . . You can imagine what disorder the ceremony was thrown into by my
attack of nerves and my fainting spell. As she was fanning me and making me breathe smelling salts, my
mother said to Aunt Olga, the dead man’s wife . . ."
"The wrong dead man?"
"No, the right one! Heavens, you are so annoying! . . . She said to my Aunt Olga, ‘It’s grief . . . shock . . . my
poor little girl is so sensitive, so loving . . .‘ A month later, Aunt Olga sent me this Brueghel ‘as a memento’
—it still makes me feel ashamed—’as a memento of Uncle Poittier, whom his little Valentine loved so
much.’ What could I do? Admit I had gotten my uncles mixed up? I kept the Brueghel. It’s so pretty . . ."
My friend picked up her tea napkin to gently wipe the gilded snow of the Nativity, and let out a sigh in which I
tried to hear as much remorse as delight.